


moons and junes and ferris wheels

by moonrocks



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Infidelity, M/M, Minor Injuries, Past Child Abuse, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 15:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21358801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrocks/pseuds/moonrocks
Summary: As Bill crosses state lines from Virginia into Tennessee, a faded green highway sign bids him goodbye. California is all he can think about, the promised land spoiling like spilt milk, and Holden is waiting for him by a broken down VW Bug at the side of the road.
Relationships: Bill Tench/Nancy Tench, Holden Ford/Bill Tench
Comments: 27
Kudos: 77





	moons and junes and ferris wheels

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for mentions of child abuse, the mention of a miscarriage, blood and injury, and the use of the Q slur.
> 
> Just some dumb thing I cooked up instead of writing my essay on Marco Polo. Go me.
> 
> Title from Both Sides Now by Judy Collins.

In June of 1970, Bill cuts his hand on a broken dinner plate.   
  
It slices down the heart line of his palm and the blood immediately gathers in Cabernet droplets along the crease of torn skin. When the surface tension breaks, it dribbles into the sink where the plate lays in pieces. It stains the delicate blue cornflowers that weave across the porcelain.  
  
It had to be the good china, the kind Nancy lets collect dust, always waiting for the right time to use it and then usually never using it at all. It was a wedding gift from her parents who are presently sitting in the living room as Nancy entertains them with charcuterie and wine. She looks just like them; wide brown eyes that taper gently at the corners like her father, her brows angled sharply on her forehead and inexpressive like her mother. The bow of her lips is soft and her nostrils are perpetually flared. Pretty, but maybe not as pretty as her mother wanted her to be.  
  
Bill presses a tea towel to the cut and it stings as much as the murmurings of nieces and nephews and grandchildren that wander into the kitchen from the living room. Bill can imagine Nancy tensing on the plaid sofa, her lips smudged with tawny peach lipstick pulled tight.  
  
The sound of the telephone pokes holes into the ambient chatter and the soft croon of the Nat King Cole record spinning on the turntable. It rings once, then it rings twice. Nancy lifts the handset from the receiver and hangs up again.  
  
“Who was that?” Bill asks her as the bleeding slows.  
  
“Wrong number.” She comes into the kitchen and her kitten heels clack against the tiles. She sees the blood on the towel and her face slackens with concern. “What did you do to yourself, Bill?”  
  
She holds his hand in her own and her touch soothes and burns like ointment on an open sore. Eight years have passed since they got married, and Bill still has that image of her in his head; bleached lace and pearl buttons down her spine and silk bows nestled in her curls, the cream of her dress dyed egg yolk yellow by the sunshine. Her veil had been splintered by the colours of the sainted stain glass while Bill stood there in his rigid, green service uniform, hands still at his sides. The church had smelled like must and stagnant air and frankincense. Their vows had echoed in the vaulted ceilings, wooden beams like monoliths in between the pews.  
  
Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage? Will you honour each other as man and wife for rest the of your lives? Will you accept children lovingly from God?  
  
Eight years later and still no children. Their neighbours are beginning to notice the absent swell of Nancy’s stomach and the lack of empty bassinet boxes on the sidewalk. Their friends are already on their second or third child and their in-laws are questioning why Nancy left her job at the hospital to be a housewife when she has no daughters to pamper and no sons to wrangle.  
  
They had tried. They had been trying since Bill carried her across the doorstep on a rainy day in July and made love to her for the first time in their bedroom, barely unpacked. It goes unsaid most days and sometimes Bill thinks maybe acceptance has set in. Months pass without even the implication that being thirty-five with no children is anything but normal, but then a letter from a cousin or an old college friend will arrive in the mail with an invitation to a baby shower or a first birthday party and Nancy will avoid him for the rest of the day.  
  
They went to the doctor after two years of nothing and a first-trimester miscarriage. They took tests. Something was wrong with the both of them, an incompatibility shown to them by the physician on a prenatal chart.  
  
Bill thought it was easier for him to take most of the blame, for his stressful lifestyle, for working too much, for never being home, and Nancy had no trouble blaming him. She never told her mother even if it would have saved her the humiliation in the short term, subdue the passive-aggressive remarks passed around the dinner table along with the chicken casserole and green beans.  
  
“Do you want me to stitch it up?” Nancy asks.  
  
Despite everything, her hands are still steady.  
  
Bill shakes his head. “It’ll heal on its own.”

*

In November of 1971, a dish breaks for a different reason.  
  
Bill is setting the table for dinner when he finds the letters. The eggshell white paper sticks out of the top of her suede handbag like she wants him to find them. They smell like her hand cream, like putrid ink and aftershave that sticks to his nose hairs and curls them inside his nostrils. The handwriting is messy and slanted, nothing like her delicate, curled script that was polished from four painstaking years of nursing school.  
  
Bill only needs to read the first line before his stomach is on the floor. It seeps between the fibres of their recently steam cleaned carpet, red viscera oozing with the mutilated remains of her fidelity.  
  
Nancy is vacuuming the living room. As soon as Bill hears the Hoover stop, he crumples up the letter and lets it fall to the floor like paper kindling waiting to be set alight. Nancy finds him there, fist still curled, and the blank yet knowing expression on her face tells him she already knows that he knows.  
  
They argue. Bill can barely hear her voice over the rush of blood in his ears. Somehow, the plate in his hand ends up against the wall. It shatters into bits with a deafening clatter, pieces of porcelain being sent across the room and tearing into the wallpaper. A jagged shard lands at her feet.  
  
She says nothing and there are tears on her cheeks, but not as many as Bill might have expected. Bill finds his wallet and his car keys and leaves through the front door, not bothering to close it behind him.  
  
California Dreaming. California Soul. California Nights. San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).  
  
Bill was still in the military during the Summer of Love, relegated to clerical work after several deployments overseas. Bill had read about the changing tides in The Washington Post and Time Magazine, about the Pentagon Papers and the anti-war protests and the sit-ins at universities across the state and across the country.  
  
He had come back from Korea at the age of nineteen to malt shops and pompadours, Elvis Presley and Little Richard and Buddy Holly and the Crickets. A decade later, it was the sounds of Monterey Pop and Woodstock and the Isle of Wight, distorted guitar and grubby teenagers dressed in afghans with unwashed hair down to their waists.  
  
But the sixties are over and Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin are dead. The rock and roll pariahs are gone. The counter-culture of yesteryear has metamorphosized into violence like it always does when people realize hallucinogens and flowers stuffed into the barrel of rifle do nothing but mask the stench of napalm and bodies rotting 10,000 miles away.  
  
Bill drives.  
  
Bill drives for a while.  
  
The sun sets and the sun rises. As he crosses state lines from Virginia into Tennessee, a faded green highway sign bids him goodbye. California is all he can think about, the promised land spoiling like spilt milk. San Diego is about the farthest he can get from Nancy without crossing the border into Mexico.  
  
He stops somewhere outside of Kingsport at a 24-hour service station, fills up on gas and fills up on coffee. At some point, he will need to buy another set of clothes, withdraw money from the bank, but for now, he likes the thought of disappearing without leaving a record behind, keeping Nancy wondering.  
  
When he was eight years old and his father hit him too hard, he would pack away his race cars and a sandwich into a bindle like the cartoons he saw during Saturday matinees at the local cinema or Charlie Chaplin when he played the Tramp. He would sit at the end of the dirt road, pulling at the weeds with his Band-Aid wrapped fingers. His father never cared much that he left. He knew Bill would be back before supper, his stomach rumbling and his knees grass-stained, but it didn’t matter. Just the thought of his father noticing he was gone, feeling the space he left behind, was enough to slow his tears and hush his bruises.  
  
He would sit there until sundown until the variety store across the street closed its doors and the sodium lights began to flicker on. He would drag himself home, sneakers in the dirt, and his mother would be setting the table as he trudged inside. She would smile and smooth out the wrinkles in her crinoline lined dress. His father would be listening to _The Abbott and Costello Show_ and reading the newspaper like nothing happened.  
  
But it did happen and it would continue. His father would come home early and Bill would come home late. His father would drink too much and Bill would stain his Sunday best. His father would take his rings off and Bill would run away again, a sock full of ice against the broken skin on his cheekbone. Sometimes he wishes he had stayed gone.  
  
San Diego it is. 

* 

It takes him six days to get to California.  
  
He stays at cheap motels when the never-ending stretch of highway threatens to lull him to sleep, the radio playing the same Roger Miller song another station played five hours before. He eats at even cheaper diners off the interstate that serve day-old coffee and hamburgers with room temperature ketchup. He speaks little to anyone but the waitresses who take his order and refill his cup and a few nosy, small-town locals who wonder who he is and where he belongs. He reveals nothing.  
  
He keeps his aviators on and his head down, the ashy smoke from his cigarette shrouding his face. He sees his reflection in the window and he looks much older than he should even though he is edging on thirty-eight. His hair is greying at the sides and the wrinkles around his eyes are more pronounced than they were a year ago. His lack of sleep does nothing to help.  
  
He stubs out his cigarette, throws some money onto the lunch counter, and finds his way back to his car.  
  
Another highway and another town, another diner that smells like Spam in a dirty skillet and looks the same as the last. The leaves on the trees grow redder and less sparse the closer he gets to the southern states. The weather slightly warms, the sky still overcast but the sun peeking through the clouds intermittently.  
  
Bill takes off his jacket as he leans against the hood of his car in the motel parking lot, flicking ash onto the pavement. He looks at the scar that crisscrosses the palm of his left hand and considers burning another beside it to mark the occasion.  
  
The farther away he gets from Virginia, the deeper his anger digs a trench somewhere he can no longer feel it. Numbness is all there is.  
  
For a moment, he regrets leaving. He knows eventually that he’ll have to make his way back. Vomit crawls up his throat when he thinks about Nancy, his hands touching her shoulders and her face where someone else’s have been.  
  
He staves off his nausea with tobacco and nicotine, then checks into his room. He falls asleep with the television on. The political news coverage of Vietnam is such a constant that it sounds like white noise.   
  
He calls work when he gets to Arkansas and Nancy when he gets to Arizona to avoid a missing person report being filed in his name. Their phone conversation is tense and brief and leaves almost everything unaccounted for. He only puts enough money into the payphone to tell her he’s spending some time with his mother. Nancy can probably tell Bill is lying, but she is in no position to pick apart his lies when her own swallow up the pauses in their conversation.  
  
She says she loves him. Another lie maybe. Bill hangs up before the hitch in her voice reveals too much.  
  
He takes off his wedding ring and puts it in the glovebox.

* 

The first time Bill sees Holden, he’s a blur on the side of Interstate 8.  
  
The sun is unencumbered by clouds that afternoon, warm and tart like a tangerine, and the man standing on the shoulder of the road is so drenched in sunshine that he nearly blends in with the arid stretch of camel coloured desert behind him.  
  
His thumb is outstretched and his light blue VW Bug is broken down beneath the underpass, smoke pouring from the hood. Bill slows down and pulls up behind him. He rolls down his window and the man strolls over.  
  
He looks like a typical college student, twenty-something years old, maybe more clean-cut than most. A black turtleneck hugs his torso while tan corduroy pants that flare slightly at the ankles hug his hips. His hair, parted in the middle, is just long enough to cover his ears. The droopy strands at the front curl around his forehead as he leans up against the door.  
  
“My car broke down,” he says. “Do you think you could give me a lift to the service station? The nearest one is just a few miles up ahead.”  
  
Bill looks at him from above the metal frames of his sunglasses and he seems harmless enough. He smiles and his canines are pronounced. He still has baby fat in his face.  
  
“Alright, hop in.”  
  
The man returns to his own car, grabbing an overnight bag from the trunk. As he bends down, Bill can see the bulky outline of a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants, but Bill is unfazed, more than used to people who conceal carry even in states where the law has been repealed. Hitchhiker paranoia must be up since the Manson murders last year, even if the targets were Hollywood darlings and not hippies looking for a ride.   
  
Locking up his car and walking back over, the man gets into the passenger seat. Bill pulls out onto the road. The VW Bug shrinks into a pea-sized dot behind them.  
  
“You got a name?” Bill asks to fracture the awkwardness as a Bob Dylan song plays faintly on the radio and gravel and sand crackles underneath the tires as they speed down the highway.  
  
“Holden.”  
  
“Holden what?”  
  
“Just Holden,” he says, turning away with a smirk. “What about you?”  
  
“Bill.”  
  
“Bill what?”  
  
“Funny.” Bill keeps his gaze is trained on the highway ahead but he has an urge to look Holden over again, find out the colour of his eyes. “Where are you from, Holden?”  
  
“Brooklyn originally, but I was living in Detroit.”  
  
“What the hell are you doing out here?”  
  
“I could ask you the same question. Your plates are from Virginia,” Holden says and Bill can feel his eyes on him, picking him apart. “What are you? Ex-military? A man your age with a crew cut in California. Are you the Zodiac the San Francisco PD is looking for?”  
  
Bill snorts. “Just another reason not to get in the car with a stranger. You might be more likely to run into a Manson in this desert, but I can tell you carry a gun.”  
  
Holden looks amused, which is a good sign that he’s not planning on robbing Bill blind, not that there would be much to steal. “How do you figure?”  
  
“That crease at the back of your pants,“ Bill says. “Are you a rookie cop or something? But what kind of cop has enough humility to drive a VW Bug?”  
  
Holden shakes his head. “Not a cop.”  
  
“Criminal?”  
  
“Are you a cop?” The smile lines around his eyes crinkle. His irises are dark blue or maybe grey and there are freckles on his cheeks brought out by the kiss of the Californian sun. “Do you want to see my permit?”  
  
“How old are you?”  
  
“Twenty-three,” Holden says. “Done interrogating me yet?”  
  
Bill smirks. “Sure.”  
  
The remainder of the drive is spent in shared silence, listening as the radio meanders from folk song to folk song. Bill would never admit it, but it helps to talk to someone other than a waitress or a cashier or a gas station attendant. Holden is the first face he has seen in 150 miles and Nancy fails to cross his mind as Bill spares a glance at him, eyeing the curls at the back of his head. Mousy brown, they look like amber honey in the sunshine.  
  
Several minutes later, they pull into the service station and Holden gets out, hauling his bag over his shoulder. He looks like the original vagabond, all curls and rough edges, a romanticized facsimile that Bill can keep in mind during the few miles left before he reaches San Diego. He has no idea what to do when he gets there. Maybe he can see the ocean.  
  
Holden pauses as he says his goodbyes, leaning against the door of the car. “Thanks again, Bill.”  
  
Bill gives him a nod and watches him go.

* 

For some reason, Bill lingers.  
  
He finds a motel nearby, just off the freeway. He books a room and retires early to shower and catch up on reruns of daytime TV, _Columbo_ and _Hogan’s Heroes._  
  
He feels suspended in time, like he merely exists and the world is happening around him, moving outside his window. His life back home has all but been abandoned. He wonders if anyone besides Nancy has noticed. He thinks about calling her and asking as he stares at the yellow telephone wire coiled over the nightstand, losing its elasticity, then decides he just needs a stiff drink.  
  
Thankfully, there’s a dive bar across the street.  
  
Bill sits by himself. The tacky neon signs outside flicker, splattered with dead gnats, fading as their bulbs gradually burn out and darken. The sky spits, turning the sidewalks a granular grey, but the rain never comes down any harder than that.  
  
Three whiskeys in, Bill hears the door open. It creaks on its rusted hinges. Holden sits down beside him and the legs of the barstool squeak against the mucky floor, stained with beer and decades-old vomit. He throws his overnight bag down beside him.  
  
“Did you get your car fixed?” Bill asks.  
  
Holden shakes his head. “Not exactly. I got it towed. The local mechanic says he can only get to it tomorrow. Where the hell are we anyway? This town has no signs.”  
  
Bill bites back his grin and takes another sip of his whiskey. It tingles on his tongue. “Beats me.”  
  
“Beats Me, California,” Holden says under his breath. He clears his throat and stares down at the beer he just ordered. His fingers fiddle with the label, ripping it from the condensation speckled glass. “Sorry, bad joke.”  
  
Bill shrugs, rustling around in his jeans pocket for his pack of cigarettes. He offers one to Holden.  
  
“No thanks.”  
  
Bill lights up. The smoke fills the pockets of his cheeks. He exhales. “You never did tell me what brought you to California.”  
  
“The not-knowing is more interesting,” Holden reasons with a shrug. “Why are you in California? Impromptu road trip? You don’t seem like the California type.”  
  
“Neither do you.”  
  
“You don’t know anything about me.”  
  
“It seems like you want to keep it that way.”  
  
Holden smiles and stares ahead. The television perched precariously above the bar switches channels and the light dyes his face with shifting purples and blues. His pupils are static as the signal goes out then comes back on.  
  
A news report takes up the screen; something about Richard Nixon and an airbase near the Mekong Delta. Bill expects to see footage of mud-stained soldiers wading through rice paddies, but the report cuts to a snippet of two politicians shaking hands instead. Maybe peace times are ahead after all. Someone in the backmost booth yells for the bartender to change the channel to the Lakers game.  
  
“How come you’re not over there?” Bill asks, motioning to the television.  
  
“What? Vietnam?” Holden raises his eyebrows at him. He takes a sip of his beer. “I was in college, which made me exempt.“  
  
“What did you go to school for?”  
  
“Psychology,” Holden says. “What was your war? Korea?”  
  
Bill wonders what gave him away, maybe his age and some simple arithmetic. “Are you trying to psychoanalyze me?”  
  
Holden laughs and his cheeks dimple. His laugh reminds Bill of songs from his youth, the croon of jazz singer, bright-toned big band pouring through a gramophone, the clarinet of Benny Goodman or the trombone of Glenn Miller. Something is nostalgic and familiar about it even though Bill has never heard it before; a summertime rapture that cuts through the rainfall.  
  
“Do you want me to?” Holden asks.  
  
“Give it a go, Freud,” Bill says to draw his eyes back to him again.  
  
Holden turns on the barstool, knees pointed towards Bill and his spine straight. He looks Bill over from the brand of his shoes to the colour of the watch on his wrist. Bill becomes hyperaware of his bare ring finger the longer Holden examines him. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat.  
  
Eventually, Holden turns back around to face the bar. He nurses his beer. “You seem like the kind of guy who is constantly kidding himself.”  
  
Just like that, their back-and-forth no longer feels like a game. The scar along Bill’s palm burns as he remembers the home he left behind to drink with a stranger in a rundown town in the middle of nowhere. He presses his tongue into his cheek and flags down the bartender for another whiskey. He knocks it back in a single gulp then throws a couple bills onto the bar top.  
  
“And you seem like the kind of kid who always has to be the smartest person in the room,” Bill says through the haze of his cigarette.  
  
Holden looks confused as Bill stands. “Where are you going?”  
  
“See you around."

*

Somehow, Bill finds himself at a carnival.  
  
He thought he would just walk and keep walking just to see where the only street in town eventually led, but then multicoloured lights split the blackened sky and Bill hears the rickety reverb of a rollercoaster ripping down wooden tracks.  
  
The air smells battered and fried. Teenagers in bell bottoms and moccasins pass by Bill and their laughter is shrill and unbidden, marijuana probably on their breath. The incessant jingle of each ride coagulates together into a cacophony of noise and overstimulation; Tilt-A-Whirls, Ferris wheels, Helter Skelters, Merry-Go-Rounds. The paint on a pair of red-ribboned white horses is chipping to reveal the metal frame underneath.  
  
A child in a stroller somewhere starts crying.  
  
Bill remembers taking Nancy to a county fair in high school. They used to go as children when Bill could still show up to school with bruises and no one would ask about them and Nancy was the conscientious eleven-year-old who lived across the street and still had to grow into her nose.  
  
When they were sixteen, he kissed her for the second time behind a pavilion selling funnel cakes and she tasted like powdered sugar and strawberry lip gloss. His stomach burns with the memory.  
  
An organ-heavy song by The Doors plays over the loudspeakers. Bill lingers a little while longer before his heart grows too heavy to remain suspended in his ribcage. He turns on his heels.  
  
When he gets back to the motel, Holden is standing by the Coke machine right next to the administrative office. His skin is cherry red in the reflection of the illuminated logo.  
  
“Are you following me?” Bill asks as he approaches him.  
  
“How many motels do you think are in this town?” Holden says as he uncaps the bottle and extends it towards Bill. “Would you like to teach the world to sing?”  
  
Rolling his eyes, Bill takes it. The usual clink, clink, clink of a ring is absent as he taps the fingers of his left hand against the glass. “This could use some rum.”  
  
Holden slots a few more coins into the machine and another bottle comes rolling out. They lean against the wall by the edge of the patio near the row of doors painted seafoam green, room numbers rusted and crooked.  
  
Neither of them say anything for a long while. Cars pass sporadically, their headlights illuminating the dusty road, and the moon is out, eggshell white and barely a sliver in the star spattered sky. The land is so flat around here. If not for the ugly cluster of dive bars and convenience stores, Bill could probably look out into the desert and see for miles.  
  
Holden looks content. The breeze tousles his hair as he leans back, one foot crossed over the other. His sweater is rolled halfway up his forearms and Bill can count the moles dotting his skin like dalmatian spots.  
  
“Are you running away from home or something?” Bill asks eventually as he lights a cigarette.  
  
The sweet sting of tobacco and the bubbling fizz of the cola are almost too much when combined. Bill grimaces, blows smoke through pursed lips.  
  
Holden shakes his head. “No, but I think you are.”  
  
Bill chuckles as they slip back into whatever game Holden is playing it. “How can you tell?”  
  
“You just told me,” Holden says. “We like to see ourselves in other people. If you listen, people will usually tell you who they are without you asking them.”  
  
Bill gives Holden a once-over with his eyes; flamboyant but mild-mannered, no discernible accent, has a bit of a stick up his ass. He looks out of place in California, but Bill figures he would look somewhat out of place everywhere.  
  
“Brooklyn, huh?” Bill says skeptically, eyebrows raised. “Really?”  
  
“I was only born there,” Holden explains. “My family moved around a lot as a kid.”  
  
Bill remembers him mentioning the military when they first met. He seemed to be able to pick it out of Bill easier than most, but he admitted he was never in the army himself. “Army brat?”  
  
“There you go.” Even then, the way Holden says it makes it sound like his victory, too arrogant for his own good. “My turn?”  
  
“Alright, fine.”  
  
“Are you married?”  
  
Bill is halfway through telling him to fuck off when Holden crowds near him, eyes searching, and the words disintegrate in his throat. Bill can almost feel his warmth even from a foot away. He smells like coffee, sweet bergamot, and cola. For a moment, Bill thinks Holden might touch him. Bill wants him to touch him, which scares him even more, but then Holden moves away. Bill burns all over.  
  
“Or divorced?” Holden says. He pinches his lower lip between his thumb and index finger in thought. “Mid-life crisis?”  
  
Holden seems to be too caught up in the game of cat-and-mouse to notice Bill growing agitated. Blood rushes in his ears as his anger builds and breaks.  
  
“Family man car, Virginia license plates, no ring on your finger,” Holden lists off with about as much sensitivity and care as someone reading aloud a grocery list. "Let me guess, either she caught you fucking someone else or you caught her.”  
  
Without thinking, Bill grabs a fistful of Holden’s sweater and slams him up against the wall. His head collides with an ungracious thump against the gritty brick and he winces, baring teeth. As soon as Bill sees the pain twist his face, he lets go of him, disgusted with himself, his temper already thinning. Bill takes a generous step back, hands falling to his sides, fists untensing. His cigarette is smeared somewhere on the concrete and his bottle of Coke lays in shatters beside it.  
  
Holden raises a shaky hand to the back of his skull and a bit of blood comes off on his fingers. “Fuck,” he mutters and he lets out a cathartic laugh. “Guess I deserved that.”  
  
Holden reaches into the pocket of his pants and finds his room key, then unlocks room number eight a few doors over. When he comes back outside, he has a sock in hand. He fills it up with ice at the dispensary machine and presses it to the back of his head, then he disappears back into his room again. He leaves the door swinging back and forth on its hinges. Bill waits there unmoving until Holden comes out of the bathroom and meets him in the doorway.  
  
“Is your head okay?”  
  
“It was a small cut.”  
  
Holden sits on the bed and the mattress springs creak. He looks over at Bill. “Are you coming in or not?”  
  
Bill steps in and closes the door. It shutters off the light from the patio and the street, engulfing them in darkness for a moment. Holden reaches over and turns on a lamp. The room is a carbon copy of every other room at the motel; a double bed with thin and scratchy sheets, a bulky dresser, a nightstand equipped with a Holy Bible, and a small television in the corner. Holden has managed to keep his room a lot cleaner than Bill has. His bed is still made. His bag is still unpacked.  
  
“My dad used to hit me,” Bill says as he points to the sock filled with ice.  
  
“My dad only hit me a handful of times,” Holden says. “But he beat me up really bad before I left for college. I guess somehow he got the idea in his head that I was queer.”  
  
“Are you queer?”  
  
Holden leans into the sock of ice and avoids his eyes. “If I was, would it matter?”  
  
Bill shakes his head. “Is that why you came to California?”  
  
“No,” Holden says and he sets down the makeshift ice pack on the nightstand. Thankfully, the fabric is only very lightly spotted with blood. “So which one was it?”  
  
It takes Bill a moment to figure out what Holden is referring to. He regards him with disbelief for still wanting to know, but at this point, he probably owes it to him. “She was fucking someone else.”  
  
Holden frowns. “Sorry.”  
  
The room grows quiet again. Bill can hear the hum of the radiator in the corner and the high-pitched whine of some faulty mechanism in the television. Bill should leave, but the impending isolation keeps his feet fused to the floor.  
  
Bill motions towards Holden. “Your cut. Can I see?”  
  
Holden bows his head in response, an invitation. Bill approaches carefully like Holden is a scared and injured animal revealing its underbelly to him. He cards a hand through his hair and the curls separate between his fingers. In the lowlight, the cut is hard to spot, but Bill feels a minute amount of blood crusting the back of his skull just beneath the crown of his head. Holden is silent as Bill gently runs his thumb over it.  
  
“I never wanted to be like him,” Bill says.  
  
His voice is hushed but it sounds so loud. He could never say these things to Nancy, but saying them to a stranger is easy, like Sunday morning confessional or whispering through a hole in the wall to deaf ears on the other side. His breath arrests in his chest as he lowers his palm.

“Neither did I,” Holden says and something indistinct shifts behind his pupils. “I would ask you to stay, but I know you’ll be gone in the morning if I do. Where are you going?”  
  
“San Diego.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“San Diego is the farthest I could get from her.”  
  
“But you’re gonna go back?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Funny how that works.” Holden sighs shortly through his nose. He sounds bitter, but Bill owes him nothing and Holden owes him even less in return. “I guess you have to when you run out of road.”  
  
“What are you outrunning?” Bill presses him; the same question he keeps asking and Holden keeps refusing to answer. His voice is gentle. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”  
  
Holden says nothing, but Bill sees his bottom lip tremble before he catches it between his teeth. A different kind of pain from before passes over his face. After a moment, Holden leans forward, his head down, and presses his forehead against Bill’s ribcage.  
  
Bill just stands there, not knowing what to do, until eventually, he puts his arms around Holden. They stay like that for a while, his hand still against the small of Holden’s back, drawing lazy circles with his thumb. When Bill feels wetness seeping through his shirt, he gets down on his knees to get a better look at him, but then Holden is pulling him by his shirt collar, pressing their mouths together.  
  
His grip is unrelenting, knuckles whitening, and the kiss is all tongue and all teeth, edging on affectionate violence. After a moment of hesitation, Bill parts his lips and presses against Holden just as desperately, leg nudging between his thighs as they fall back against the mattress.  
  
Bill can feel him there, erection straining against his pants, and Bill almost pulls away to re-evaluate himself. He remembers the wedding ring in the glovebox of his car, but he also remembers the letters, the miss-yous and I-love-yous and wish-you-were-heres scrawled in green ink in an unfamiliar handwriting. He should have put them back and pretended he never saw them, but instead he fists his hands in Holden’s hair and tugs. The memories feel farther and farther away as Holden sinks in his teeth.   
  
Eventually, they break apart so Holden can undress himself, finally letting go of Bill. He mourns the loss. Holden tugs his sweater over his head and unbuttons his pants. Bill says nothing, only watches him do it, his hands untaught and unsteady. He tries to even out his breath as Holden lays himself bare in front of him. Heat lines his stomach before sinking between his legs.  
  
Holden leans back against the headboard, his skin exposed. Bruises mottle the expanse of his ribs and chest. They look recent, fresh and pink like raw meat. A darker one shadows his hip bone and snakes towards his inner thigh, dusky and blue. Bill wonders where they came from but he knows if he asks Holden will just come up with more excuses.  
  
Bill touches him. His hands ghost over his collar bone, his stomach, his sides. His skin is soft and muscled underneath but marred, so Bill is careful not to press too hard.  
  
Holden is the antithesis of everything he was supposed to want; he is bent out of shape and stained beyond measure, but God he is beautiful. Bill was supposed to want the picture-perfect home with the two-car garage and the father-son fishing trips and the wedding anniversaries celebrated at the same restaurant every year. His life was supposed to be a black-and-white advertisement of the middle-class suburban ideal that his parents always wanted, that Nancy wanted, and he supposes he wanted too. Nancy took that away from him, and he took that away from her just the same.  
  
As Holden unbuckles his belt and wraps his hand around his cock, Bill understands why she lied, why she kept the telephone calls and the love notes hidden and tucked away to keep the illusion from breaking. Bill falls apart on soiled sheets in a shady motel room in the middle of a desert far from home and nothing has ever felt less like sin.  
  
Holden is a sigh and a ghost and whisper and when Bill wakes up the next day, the other side of the bed is empty.  
  
He knows he has to go back.

*

Bill gets to San Diego by mid-afternoon.  
  
He finds a bar by the highway that has a payphone. His wedding ring is on his finger again as he counts the coins in his pocket and slides them into the slot. He waits for the dial tone and glances at the television in the corner that is flipped to the local news.  
  
The phone rings and rings and rings again, then someone on the other end picks up.  
  
“Hello?” Nancy asks and her voice sounds hollow on the other side of the line. “Hello? Who is this?”  
  
But Bill says nothing, still staring at the TV. An image flashes across the screen; a blue VW Bug parked at the side of the highway beneath the underpass. 

The front seat is stained with blood.

**Author's Note:**

> No, I will not elaborate. Only thing I'll say is Holden is not a serial killer.
> 
> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
